COMMUNITY COALITION ON GRIEF & BEREAVEMENT, INC.

JUNE 20, 2017 11:30 AM

GENERAL MEETING

KANGAS CAFÉ, HANCOCK

ATTENDANCE: Nancy Beyers Wakeman, Barbara Kendall, Marja Salani, Kathryn Moore, Bonnie Johnson, Sarah Baratono, Kristine Putz, Pam Anderson, Michael Lutz. A quorum of members was established.

WELCOME AND INTRODUCTIONS: Nancy welcomed members to the meeting and provided opportunities for those present to focus on their agency news and other concerns related to their own lives and concerns of the coalition.

  • Marja told the group of her involvement in a new UPCAP initiative to offer educational training for individuals interested in providing respite care services to individuals and people in our community. She feels this will enhance the efforts of our group in identifying grieving people and offer grief support.
  • Kristine announced Dial Help grant funding to develop a UP wide network to provide services to individuals experiencing sexual abuse. She also volulnteered her expertice in keeping the plans and announcements of the coalition on face book.

MEETING FOCUS: The focus of the meeting was to hear from the program committee on the progress in planning our August Community Education Event.

MEETING MINUTES: The minutes from our last meeting, our fall 2016 annual meeting have been available on our web site. Members stated they had reviewed the minutes and the minutes were accepted without change. We have been able to secure the experience of the First United Methodist Church Secretary Sandy Michael who volunteered to be our next web master. We voted to express our thanks to her with a gift certificate to ShopKo for $50.00.

TREASURER REPORT: Kathryn reported a balance in our treasury of $662.28. The treasurer report was accepted and placed on file. Our income has come from donations in memory of people from our community. We welcome donations as we do not have an income other than the sale of our post cards and a donation box at our events. It was stressed that we need to educate the community on the advantage of donating to us as we are a 501c3 organization and seek grant funding opportunities. The annual audit of our treasury will take place in October 2017 under the direction of Bonnie our financial auditor

COMMITTEE REPORTS:

Program and Events

The program committee has met to plan our next program and focus on the needs of grieving people;You Are Never Too Old or Too Young to Deal Effectively With Grief and Loss. The program will be held on Thursday August 17, 2017 from 6:30 to 8:30 PM at the Copper Country Mental Health Institute in Houghton.

  • We have decided to schedule the program in August due to the availability of a nationally known grief speaker who will be waving his usual speaking fee.
  • The speaker will be Stephen Moeller from Grief Recovery Services, Inc. located in Broken Arrow,Oklahoma. He spends summers in Eagle Harbor MI and in addition to waving his usual speaking fee he will not be asking for travel reimbursement. We feel fortunate to secure this speaker and look forward to his message in supporting grieving people and their families.
  • Our concern now is in planning a budget. We do have money in the treasury but not enough. Nancy submitted a grant to the Mary Thompson Foundation and hopes to hear soon as to whether we will receive funding. The program planning committee will meet again on July 12, 2017 11:30 at the Kangas Cafe to make final plans for publicity and hosting the event with volunteers to bring refreshments.
  • Our current publicity plan will be to mail our newsletter with a program poster by July 24th; Mike from Omega House has designed a poster and will provide us with 200 copies by the next meeting. Members offered suggestions to the program design and wording. Barbara took suggestions for the content of the newsletter. Barbara will also contact PortageHospital to see if they are still willing to provide postage for the mailing.
  • We will mail announcements to radio, newspapers and TV cable for publishing by July 24th. We will also mail to area churches to be announced in their newsletters. Sarah volunteered to write an article for the Gazette to be published before our program.
  • Depending a funding we will purchase advertisements in local newspapers.Nancy volunteered to work with the Daily Mining Gazette. Bonnie will submit the program announcement in the Ontonagon paper and Pam will cover the L’Anse newspaper.
  • We have secured a date for a WOLF radio interview to be aired the Sunday morning before the program. Barbara will provide Rick Allen with the program details, Marja will accompany the speaker to the taping of the program week before the program airing. We will also ask Rick Allen about TV coverage both before and during the program.

Grants and Funding

Nancy shared with us her work in submitting thegrant application with the Mary Thompson Foundation. This was the organization that originally awarded us funding to establish the coalition. We learned that the first reaction to the submission has been positive. We praised Nancy for this work and learned that Valorie Troche reviewed the grant proposal for Nancy.

Membership

At this time we have not heard from Marianne about her willingness to continue to serve on the board due to her job change. Nancy has been contacted by Portage Hospice about their new grief support person and maybe his willingness to serve on the board. We will consider the election of new members at our annual meeting in September.

OLD BUSINESS:

  • We reported on the successful distribution of our new large print Holiday Grief handout last winter. We have only a few left at this time. We reviewed the program evaluations from our October, 2016 program

FUTURE MEETING SCHEDULED: The next meeting will be on Tuesday September 19. 2017, at the Kangas Café in Hancock. Members are asked to arrive at the café by 11:30 to order their lunch so we can begin the meeting by noon.